Letter to an Inanimate Object

Dear Bookshelf,

I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and I thought right now would be a good time. You are the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I see before dozing off to sleep. I mean, you are positioned right in front of my bed, but still. Today I am having one of those nights and I need your support. One of those days when the numbness starts at my toes and crawls it’s way up to my chest where it rests, leaving me feeling like I have a twenty pound boulder resting on my lungs. Where the nerves around my eyes start to ache as they fight to keep the tears from falling. Where my mouth forgets how to secrete moisture leaving my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, silencing anything I have to say and I sit there frozen, everything around me moving in a blur as I’m stuck inside my own self. My body shuts down and refuses to react but that doesn’t stop me from feeling everything. After all, as John Green says, pain demands to be felt. But I’m not worried because even if the world comes crashing down around me I know you wouldn’t crumble. When I’m surrounded by darkness all I need to do is reach for you and take me away and fill my world with light. I still remember the first day I got you. I picked you out from a row of other bookshelves at IKEA and brought you home. At that point you were only a pile of wooden planks and screws but I assembled you piece by piece into the amazing structure you are today. Not to body shame you, but you were pretty heavy to carry into my room especially for my eleven year old body, but I never once in my life regretted you not even for a second. Your sturdy wooden exterior never wavers and you carry the sum of hundreds of books as if they are weightless. You always hold the answers when I’m in need of an escape, providing me with countless options from fantasy to romance to mystery. You’ve seen me grow up and go through all of my phases, some embarrassing and some we’ll never speak of…. Do you remember my Dork Diaries phase? Oh how we’ve come a long way. Now we read very sophisticated intellectual pieces of literature. Okay fine we still read the same Young Adult fantasy books and crush on the brooding main character every single time but it’s still an improvement! I’m going away to college soon but you won’t get rid of me that fast, because wherever I go in life there will always be a space for you. You are the one consistent thing in my life and I hope you know that even if I get rich and buy one those fancy ceiling high bookshelves with the wheelable ladder, that I’ll never leave you behind because you never left me behind.

Love,

Your bestie Marim